1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to a communication network, and more specifically to a free space optical communication network.
2. Discussion of the Related Art
Due to the absence of fiber in many areas of the world, broadband media is being delivered via satellite, coaxial cable, and over copper phone lines using various forms of digital subscriber line. These systems provide limited and restricted services. Additionally, these are costly systems and require large amounts of time and resources to implement. The use of coaxial cable and phone lines require gaining access to property (both public and private) to lay the cable and lines. This in itself can be cost prohibitive. Often, laying these cables requires the cables to be installed under ground requiring roads to be dug up and heavy equipment to be utilized. In rural areas the equipment often is unavailable. Thus, establishing these previous networks is extremely time consuming, disruptive to the community and extremely costly.
These previous systems also introduce a large amount of latency in the signal transmission. Using a satellite-based asynchronous system involves having the phone line as a back channel through the public switched telephone network to switch between different media, data or information, if these options are available. This creates a very long loop delay. Similar latency problems exist for digital cable systems that attempt to provide each user with a restricted bandwidth with a switched head end.